Workers fight boss attacks on jobs, wages, conditions
https://themilitant.com/2020/07/18/workers-fight-boss-attacks-on-jobs-wages-conditions/
BY ROY LANDERSEN
Vol. 84/No. 29
July 27, 2020
Tens of thousands protest July 11 in Tel Aviv, Israel, against
government’s failure to deliver aid promised to workers classified as
self-employed. Sign reads, “Out of touch! We’re fed up!”
AP/ARIEL SCHALIT
Tens of thousands protest July 11 in Tel Aviv, Israel, against
government’s failure to deliver aid promised to workers classified as
self-employed. Sign reads, “Out of touch! We’re fed up!”
Speedup and dangerous working conditions enforced by bosses at Los
Angeles Apparel and at nearby meatpacking plants highlight the employers
contempt for workers’ safety and lives. Four workers at L.A. Apparel
have recently died from coronavirus and over 300 working there have been
infected.
In a June 26 visit to this south L.A. site, inspectors cited “flagrant
violations” of infection control measures, including the use of
makeshift cardboard barriers between workers. The following day
inspectors closed the plant.
These conditions and similar conditions elsewhere show the urgent need
for a fight by those who work to control all aspects of production —
from safety precautions, sanitary facilities, line speeds and break
times, and to take decisions on these questions out of the hands of
profit-hungry company owners. The bosses’ organization of production is
the deadliest threat to workers’ health, safety and lives.
Workers at nine industrial sites, five of them meatpacking plants in
south L.A., were struck by similar outbreaks of the disease in May. The
largest of these was at the Smithfield Foods-owned Farmer John plant of
1,837 workers. Months earlier a government agency had given meatpacking
plant bosses the green light to increase line speeds, pushing workers in
the plants into closer proximity in order to ramp up production.
As the capitalist crisis deepens working people are organizing to stand
up to the bosses here and around the world.
Thousands of shipyard workers in Bath, Maine, have been on strike since
June 22 against bosses’ attempts to replace union members with contract
workers and attack seniority protections in order to deepen their
attacks on wages and conditions. Some 350 drivers, members of Teamsters
Local 25 in Watertown and Everett, Massachusetts, struck Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority’s The Ride program July 12 after bosses
tried to cut their health insurance. These struggles need solidarity
from working people and our unions.
In Israel, tens of thousands of mainly youthful demonstrators in Tel
Aviv July 11 voiced their anger at monthslong delays of promised
government aid to the self-employed and small-business owners. Since a
government-enforced lockdown, unemployment in the country has risen to 21%.
Some 12,000 protesters converged on Baghdad, Iraq, from the mainly
Shiite south of the country July 12, to protest Prime Minister Mustafa
al-Kadhimi’s decision to halt monthly compensation payments from the
government to thousands who were previously imprisoned by the Saddam
Hussein regime. Government security forces the protesters, shooting and
killing two people.
The unprecedented downturn in worldwide production and trade, brought on
by government shutdowns, is intensifying competition among workers for
jobs. Governments in some places are now reversing steps to reopen
commerce and are reimposing shutdowns as fresh outbreaks of the virus
surface. Workers face the pressing need to fight for jobs and get us
back to work where we can join other workers in the struggles for safer
working conditions and better wages.
Bosses inflict massive job cuts
Nearly 33 million working people in the U.S. have filed claims for
jobless benefits as of June 20 — five times the peak of unemployment
during the 2008 recession.
Some 1.3 million of those newly out-of-work filed claims the first week
of July. An additional million self-employed and other workers applied
the same week through the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
In this wave of layoffs, many job cuts are now permanent as more
businesses fold. Bosses at United Airlines said 36,000 workers, almost
half the workforce, would be furloughed July 8.
As workers organize to defend ourselves in on-the-job skirmishes and
strikes we have opportunities to win allies and build support for our
common struggles. These actions and the fight for solidarity with them
are the foundation for charting a road forward.
Bath shipyard strike against union busting needs support!
In the largest labor conflict in the country, over 4,300 shipbuilding
workers, members of Machinists Local S6, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath,
Maine, continue to win support and solidarity from area unions and local
businesses as their strike…
Nurses on strike in Joliet: ‘We can set an example’
JOLIET, Ill. — Chanting, “What do we want? Safe staffing! When do we
want it? Now!” some 200 striking nurses, their families and supporters
rallied outside the AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center here July
12. The action was preceded…
More coverage to come on Asarco strike and the solidarity it won…
The article “Asarco Miners End Strike, Look to Continue to Fight” in the
last issue of the Militant wasn’t able to do full justice to the
determined battle by the big majority of the copper miners to defend
their unions,…
Montreal longshoremen strike over unsafe schedules
MONTREAL — Over 1,000 longshoremen at the port here, members of Canadian
Union of Public Employees Local 375, carried out a 40-hour strike
beginning July 2 against Montreal Gateway Terminals Partnership bosses.
They targeted the Cast and Racine terminals, shutting…
Front Page Articles
Bath shipyard strike against union busting needs support!
Workers fight boss attacks on jobs, wages, conditions
No worker has to die on the job! For workers control of production
Help us put the Socialist Workers Party on the ballot!
Join protests for prosecution of cops who killed Breonna Taylor!
Defense of free speech, debate met with slander and threats of reprisal
Feature Articles
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Also In This Issue
Nurses on strike in Joliet: ‘We can set an example’
US execution: ‘Brutal weapon in hands of capitalist rulers’
More coverage to come on Asarco strike and the solidarity it won...
Montreal longshoremen strike over unsafe schedules
Books of the Month
Che: ‘Moncada attack was beginning of Cuba’s revolution’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
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Richard Dawkins
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all
decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this
sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running
for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from
within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation,
thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this
very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the
natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons
and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people
are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find
any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has
precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
